The wartime record
My grandfather Walter G. Gates’s Overseas War Diary identifies him as the right waist gunner on Lt. George W. Foote’s crew in the 449th Bomb Group (Heavy), 716th Bomb Squadron. Its opening records arrival at Grottaglie, Italy, on December 28, 1943. The dated entries begin in January 1944.[1]
The diary is a daily record of people and conditions as well as missions. It describes practice flights, mechanical problems, weather, guard duty, meals, letters, visits to town, rest periods, and the effect of losses on the men around him. News of losses appears alongside repairs, waiting, letters, and ordinary routines. The dated sequence shows how those experiences accumulated.[1]
The daily entries and the loss of the crew
The daily record ends on May 22, 1944. The epilogue describes the crew being shot down by flak over Wiener-Neustadt on May 24. Gates identifies four crew members who died and six who parachuted out, were captured, and survived the war. The later epilogue carries the story beyond the final daily entry.[2]
In the later account, Gates credits Foote with remaining at the controls and creating a chance for surviving crew members to escape. He argues that Foote’s conduct deserved recognition. His account is a survivor’s tribute to the pilot whose actions he believed had saved lives.[3]
Captivity and return
A separate document, Stalagluft-IV, recounts Gates’s experience as a prisoner of war. It describes preparing for evacuation, leaving by train, further transfers, and eventually returning through France to the United States. Gates qualifies some dates with phrases indicating that he is recalling events long afterward.[4]
The diary supplies the sequence before the loss; the later account follows Gates through captivity and return. His uncertainty about some dates remains part of that recollection. The source register records the questions still to be checked against other records.[4]
How the material was preserved
The archive includes a letter dated July 30, 1996. Gates explains that he had recently had his diary typed and added an epilogue to account for the crew. He also describes four survivors meeting on the fifty-second anniversary of the loss. The letter explains how the typed diary and epilogue came together more than fifty years after the wartime entries.[3]
The family now holds a daily diary, an account of the crew’s loss, a POW recollection, and later correspondence. Together they preserve both Gates’s wartime experience and his later effort to account for the men who shared it.
Following the recognition questions
I am developing the records behind Walter’s Purple Heart effort and the recognition questions connected with the people in his story. The research page distinguishes what his diary says from the documents still needed, and provides a way to share a relevant record or research lead.
Cynthia and the next generation
My mother is Cynthia Daphne Gates. Her story connects the Gates side of the archive with the family she and my father Brian raised together. The parents chapter includes their documented marriage and an archive photograph of them in 2005. Read Cynthia’s part of the family story →